The buried nations of the infant dead; a study in eschatology

Front matter

_ THE BURIED NATIONS OF THE INFANT DEAD

“A. STUDY IN ESCHATOLOGY

PRATT hs % if.

Preface

The author, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, class of 1855, has for the most of his long ministerial life been closely identified with the work of Spanish Evangelization. But being a man “unknown to fame,’ having never cared to accept honorary degrees, which seem to impugn the doctrine of the parity of the Christian Ministry, it occurs to him that treating of so unaccustomed a theme as “The Buried Nations of the Infant Dead,’ it is due to his readers, as well as to himself, to preface the same with a more or less complete list of his former publications (other than newspaper articles), in order to give them the assurance beforehand that they are not following the guidance of a novice in these special studies, or the ill-balanced speculations of one who intrudes rashly into the realm of ‘things unseen” as yet.

Fifty or sixty years ago, the Rev. Dr. Philip Schaff, in his “History of the Apostolic Church,” said that different great departments of the Christian revelation have occupied successively the attention of the Church in the lapse of the ages, and that the subject of Ecclesiology was at that time uppermost in the realm of religious thought, and when that was disposed of, then Hschatology—or the science of “the last things’—would follow in due course, as the final one of the great problems of Christian doctrine calling for satisfactory solution. I cite from memory, my own copy of his book having been misplaced during the many changes of my life.

But whether we will or not, that great and most important branch of Biblical knowledge is in our ll PREFACE.

day forcing itself on our attention as never before; and the dozen or more theories of “the Millennium,” and of the Second Advent (some sober, some wild, and some dangerous) that are gaining adherents in our day, will serve me as excuse, if excuse be needed, for submitting to the consideration of the Christian public, and committing to the blessing of God, this humble attempt to advance the cause of Gospel Truth, in reference to what is at this present the most important, perhaps, and least understood of the great departments of Bible doctrine, which our Lord made pre-eminent in his own teaching,and which from the beginning he has given in charge to the studious, and prayerful, and ceaseless attention of his people.

As the subject is new to most people, being, for one reason or another, avoided by the general pulpit, and barely touched upon in what is called “practical religion” in our day (though on the lips of our Lord and his apostles all the time), if the reader will honor my booklet with a second reading, in order to grasp the subject well, I am sure he will find it a study of the most intense interest, and of the highest practical value.

The subject ought to interest everyone, as there are few homes that have not buried their infant dead. The book embraces the studies of a lifetime, and will afford the reader scope for profitable meditation along new lines of “orthodox” belief; even though he may not be able either to accept at once all the author’s positions, or to refute them, buttressed as they are at every step by the sure word of God, concerning things past, present and future—while avoiding carefully the details of unfulfilled prophecy.

With these explanations, and fully conscious of the many imperfections of the work, I commit this Study

PREFACE, ill in Eschatology to the good hand of God, and to the indulgent consideration and criticism of my brethren.

H. B. PRATT.

Hackensack, N. J., September 13, 1910.

AUTHOR’S PREVIOUS PUBLICATIONS.

1. “The Right of the People to the Word of God.” Bogota, Colombia, S. A. 1856. Spanish.

2. “The St. Peter Question.’ Bogota, Colombia, S. A. 1857. Spanish,

3. “Noches con los Romanistas.” Spanish transla. tion of Seymour’s “Evenings with the Romanists,” with Translator’s Appendix on the St. Peter Question. New York, 1860. Over 10,000 copies printed.

Three editions also printed in Madrid, Spain. Somewhat abridged.

4, Partial Revision of the old Reina-Valera Bible. 1860, 1861.

5. “Death, the Resurrection, and the Intermediate State.” Southern Presbyterian Review. 1866.

6. “The Hope of the Gospel.” Southern Presbyterian Review. 1867.

‘7. “A Defense of Presbyterian Baptism.” Presbyterian Committee of Publication. Richmond, Virginia. 1869.

9. “La Biblia y la Adoracién de la Hostia.” Socorro. 1874.

10, “La Biblia y sus Opositores.” Reply to Booklet of Sr. José M. Groot, Editor of “El Catolicismo.” Bogota. 1875.

iV PREFACE.

12. “El Libro de los Salmos.” Radical revision of the Reina-Valera Psalms, to serve only as a basis for a more perfect Spanish Version. Bucaramanga. 1875.

Reprinted in New York, 1879. Reprinted in Madrid, Spain, 1882 (?). Reprinted in Barcelona, Spain. 1883,

13. “El Evangelio de San Mateo.” Radical revision of Reina-Valera New Testament; to serve only as a basis for a more perfect Spanish Version. Interrupted by the Revolution of 1876. Bucaramanga. 1877.

14. “The Righteousness of God to be Universally Confessed.”’ Sermon preached before the Synod of South Carolina, on Rom. 3:19. Published by request in Southern Presbyterian Review. 1880.

15. “Studies on the Second Advent.” First Series. 1880.

16. “Studies on the Second Advent.” Second Series. 1881.

17, “The Liberty of Praising God,” in Hymns as well as Psalms. A review of Claybaugh’s “Ordinance of Praise.” 1881. Presbyterian Committee of Publication, Richmond, Virginia.

18. New Translation of the Bible into Spanish; “La Version Moderna.” The first Spanish translation of the Bible ever made from the original tongues. 1883— 1893. American Bible Society, New York. 1898.

19. An Idiomatic Transiation of the Book of Genesis from the original Hebrew into Spanish. American Bible Scciety. 1886.

20. Torrey’s “How to Bring Men to Christ.” Spanish Translation. Mexico. 1889.

PREFACE, Vv

21. “The Length of the Sojourn in Egypt,” Southern Presbyterian Review. 1889.

“The World Viewed as the Subject of Ruin and

Redemption.” Southern Presbyterian Review. 1895.

“Hstudios sobre el Libro del Génesis.” Pp. 510. “Hstudios sobre el Libro del Exodo.” Pp. 450.

“Hstudios sobre el Libro del Levitico.” Pp. 420.

The first and only Protestant commentaries on books of the Old Testament ever published in Spanish.

These three works were turned over to the Amer-

26. from 27. redo,

28. 1899.

ican Tract Society, in trust and perpetuity, as the author’s personal contribution to the cause of Spanish Evangelization; providing for their permanent sale at the uniform price of 50 cents gold, postpaid, within the limits of the Postal Union.

“Studies on the Book of Genesis.” Translated the Spanish. 1906.

“El Catecismo Menor.’ New Translation. La- Texas. 1899.

Vest-pocket edition of “Los Proverbios.” Revision of La Moderna, for the Mexican Centennial, American Bible Society. 1910.

fare ve Hy at i!

OF THE

INFANT DEAD.

A STUDY IN ESCHATOLOGY.

If our first parents had maintained that original condition of “righteousness and true _ holiness’’ in which they were created ; if sin and death had never invaded the world, and man had fulfilled the first recorded command given to an unfallen and happy race: “ Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it”’ (Gen. 1: 28), in a comparatively short time there would have been no space left for them to multiply and increase in. Even in a world of sin and misery, of sorrow, disease and death, it has been often found that under favorable circumstances, and with abundance of wholesome food, a healthy and vigorous stock will double itself every 25 years. Itis therefore a most reasonable proposition that the unfallen race of Adam and Eve, free from disease; want and death, industrious, frugal, continent, pure and holy, loving God supremely, and each his neighbor as_ himself, would have doubled itself four times over in the course of every hundred years, and would have continued indefinitely to do the same. Anybody with pencil and paper before him can easily make the calculation of this endless progression.

The two in 25 years would make four; in 50, eight; in 75, sixteen; and in 100, thirty-two. In 200 years the race at the same rate of progression would number 512; in 300 years, 8,192; in 400 years, 181,072; in 500 years, 2,097,192; in 600 years, 33,555,072; in 700 years, 496,881,- 112; in 800 years, 3,975,049,215, or more than two and a half times the present population of our world, estimated at 1,500 millions; in 900 years, 63,600,198,456 ; and in 1,000 years, 1,017,- 612,767,296—enough to people more than 600 worlds like our own! At the same rate of arithmetical progression, in 1,500 years, or at the date of Noah’s Flood, that single pair of unfallen human beings would have reached the inconceivable figure of 900 quadrillions, more than sufficient to people 600,000 worlds like ours! We ask ourselves in wonderment where it would have pleased God to arrest this rate of increase, and revoke that first command of his. Some one will perhaps here say that before many ages had elapsed he would have found himself in the necessity of changing his plan. That might well be said of some supposed “holy Jupiter,’’ who moves down the stream of time along with the rest of us, and amends his purposes, and alters his plans, as each new emergency may require ; but it is a simple absurdity when speaking of “the High and Holy One who inhabiteth eternity,’ who lives abreast of all its endless ages, —fills it up with his changeless being, as he does all space with his measureless immensity. “Do not I fill heaven and earth ? saith the Lord.” Jer. 23, 24. No supposed change of plan could ever apply to the case of him to whom the end is not merely foreseen, but is ever as present as the beginning, and to whom our creature distinctions of past, present and future do not exist ; so that the creation of man, together with his sin and fall, and the redemptive work of Christ, from start to finish, were from the beginning as present and immediate to him as they were ever going to be. The Fall, therefore, with all its attendant and resultant consequences, entered essentially into the plan and purpose of the creation and redemption of the fallen race, ruined in Adam, but redeemed and restored in Christ, the second Adam.

“The heaven, even the heavens are the Lord’s, BUT THE EARTH HATH HE GIVEN UNTO THE CHILDREN OF MEN.” Ps, 115:16.

‘God himself who formed the earth and made it, he hath established it ; he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited.’”’ Isa. 45:18.

The Purpose of Redemption—God’s Original Purpose.

As therefore the over-population of the world formed no part of his purpose and plan, he made provision (while working out the problem of the exceeding sinfulness and malignity of sin, and the glories of his own redeeming grace), to people it permanently with a nobler race than ever Adam’s was or could have been, ‘‘ zn order that in the ages to come he might make known unto the principalities and powers in the heavenly places the exceeding greatness of his grace, in his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” Eph. 2:7. Jesus said to the unbelieving Sadducees: ‘‘The children of THIS WORLD [or age] marry and are given in marriage; but they that shall be accounted worthy to obtain THAT WORLD [or age] AND THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD, neither marry nor are given in marriage; for neither can they die any more (R. V.) [reproduction therefore will be no longer necessary to its population]; for they are equal unto the angels [ Matthew and Mark say “‘ they are as the angels in heaven,” and therefore non-productive | and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.” Luke 20:34-36. <A perfected, sinless, deathless and non-productive race, complete in numbers, to be neither increased nor diminished, who should be “‘to the praise of the gbory of his grace,’ was from the beginning the ultimate end of man’s creation. And thus we read eight times over of the ‘‘ Book of Life,” the ** Lamb’s Book of Life,” and the ‘‘ Book of Life in which the names were written from the foundation of the world” (Rey. 17:8); so that this purpose (as Luke 20:36 states it) will only, and can only be accomplished when we are really and fully “‘ the children of God, being the children of the resurrection”’; and thus Paul also states it in reference to himself, as his highest aspiration (both then on earth, and now in heaven) to be WAITING FOR THE ADOPTION, TO WIT, THE RE- DEMPTION OF OUR BODY (Rom. 8:23)—‘‘the adoption of sons” being, as he says in Gal. 3:4, God’s great and ultimate purpose when he ‘‘sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law; to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.”?

Thus, too, Christ himself states the case, in John 6: 38-40: ‘‘T came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. And this is the Father’s will who hath sent me, that of all that which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one that seeth the Son and believeth on him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.” To the same effect Peter tells us that all heaven, both prophets, and saints and angels, are standing in waiting expectancy of ‘‘ the salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet. 1:4-12); and Paul adds that not only we, but ‘‘the whole creation,’ in groaning and travailing hope, with outstretched neck is likewise ‘‘ waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God; because the creation itself also is to be delivered out of the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.” Rom. 8:18-28.

It is evidently the same “‘ creation” of which we are part; for in 2 Pet. 3:5-18, the Spirit of Inspiration speaks by Peter of ‘‘the heavens and the earth’’ which were before the Flood; ‘‘ THE WORLD THAT THEN WAS, which being overflowed by water, perished”’; then next, of ‘‘the heavens and the earth that are now’’—THE WORLD THAT NOW 18; which is in like manner to be swept with a flood of fire—swept clean of sin and sinners ;—and then he tells us that believing men

OF THE INFANT DEAD. 7q of that day, ‘‘according to God’s promise, were looking for new heavens and a new earth [THE WORLD THAT IS TO BE HEREAFTER], wherein dwelleth righteousness’’; something which seems wholly to have passed out of the hopes and expectations of most Christians in our day; many of whom regard all serious “looking for such things’’ as evidence of a disordered fancy or an unbalanced mind.

Having in view this same great and common hope of the Apostolic Church, Paul tells the Hebrews, who expected the literal and immediate fulfilment of the same misunderstood promises, that unto his only-begotten Son, and “not unto angels, did God subject (R. V.) the world to come, whereof we speak.”? Heb. 2:5. In the Greek text ‘the world to come” is in its form wholly unexampled, being literally ‘‘the habitable (or inhabited) earth, THE ONE THAT IS TO BE’’; words which by no possibility can be tortured into meaning “the Gospel Dispensation,” by any who understand the meaning of Greek words. As the writer had not so much as referred to any such thing, the words “‘ whereof we speak’’ can only mean, about which we Christians are always talking. Peter says they were looking for it,—not today nor tomorrow, but in due season; and Paul says that they were always talking about it, as the end of their hopes. And all through the New Testament we find that this was the literal fact; as he tells the Corinthian Christians that “‘they came behind in no gift, WAITING FOR THE COMING (or the revelation) oF ouR LorD JEsus Curist’”’ (1 Cor. 1:7); and reminds the Thessalonians (1 Thes. 1:10) ‘“‘how they turned unto God from idols, to serve the living and true God, AND TO WAIT FOR HIS SON FROM HEAVEN, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, who deliyered us from the wrath to come,’’—the wrath which is to overwhelm the world of the ungodly, and wipe it clean again of sin and sinners. Rom. 1:18; 2 Thes. 1: 8-10.

And in Titus 2:11-15, he gives us this fulllength portrait of a Christian of the first century and the Apostolic Church: “ For the grace of God, which bringeth salvation unto all men [and not to Jews only], hath appeared; teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godly, in this present world (or age), LOOKING FOR THAT BLESSED HOPE AND THE GLORIOUS APPEARING OF THE GREAT GOD AND OUR SAVIOR [or of our great God and Savior], Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people [=a people peculiarly his own, or of his exclusive possession], zealous of good works. These things speak and exhort,” etc. And however seldom referred to in our day, in the nature of things it must be even more important and timely to ‘speak and exhort of these things”? now than it was in apostolic times; “‘ for now is our salvation nearer than when we (or they) first believed.’’* Rom. 13:11. |

When in the days of Noah, “the Flood came (upon a careless and ungodly world) and took

*In reply to the frequent allegation that they were a badly deceived set, to be ‘‘looking for such things’’ so far ahead of time, it will be sufficient to ask: Jn what other time were they individually to look for them, except in their own brief hand-breadth of time, ‘‘ which they spent as a shadow on the earth’’? The infidel, Ernest Renan, was at least self-consistent (which some so-called ‘‘liberal’’ Christians are not) in representing that Jesus was himself the leader of the deluded host; for that at one period of his life ‘‘ he certainly expected that within 30 or 40 years he would come, with his mighty angels. flying in the clouds of heaven.’’ But, as Paul says, ‘‘the foolishness of God is wiser than men;’’ for what other way was there to have each successive generation of his people ‘‘like servants who wait for their lord, when he shall return from the wedding’’? That they have ceased to be such, is the real cause of the worldliness and self-indulgence of the professed Christian Church. To the holy dead tt has really made no difference, as they will be on hand just the same ‘‘in that day’’; and meantime they wazt in heaven, ‘‘with Christ,’’ till ‘‘them that sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.’? 1 Thes. 4:14.

them all away,” the new world was re-peopled by Noah and them that were with him in the ark. Gen. 10:32. And thus when again the world is swept clean of sin and sinners by that coming flood of fire, it will (as I read the Scriptures) be re-peopled by saved and resurrected saints ; WHO WILL BE PRINCIPALLY THE INFANT DEAD. And be it remembered (because too often forgotten or denied), that ‘RESURRECTED SAINTS” WILL BE AS REAL AND TRUE MEN AND WOMEN, and a great deal more so, than ever they were in “this body of sin and death.’”? The resurrected Jesus said to his amazed disciples, of his risen and “spiritual body’: ‘‘ Behold my hands and my feet, rHaT Ir 18 | MysELF; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.’”’ Luke 24:39. And thirty years after he had ascended to glory, the apostle said: We are MEMBERS OF HIS BODY, OF HIS FLESH AND OF HIS BONES, Eph. 5:39. Yet so deeply rooted is this semimanichean prejudice against the salvation of our body (a true, material body, albeit with different properties), that Mr. Moody did not think it beneath the dignity and importance of the subject to affirm that ‘“‘when Jesus went away to heaven HE DID NOT LEAVE HIS FLESH AND BONES BEHIND.”

And so the promise literally runs in Ezekiel,

OF THE INFANT DEAD. a9 which is not to be explained away as figurative language (for figurative language can only be based on an objective reality): ‘‘ Behold, oh, my people, I will open your graves, and will cause you to come up out of your graves, and I will bring you into the land of Israel.” Ezek. 37:12. Or, as Isaiah no less clearly expresses it: “I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an inheritor of my mountains (or mountain country); and mine elect shall inherit it, and my servants shall dwell there”’; spoken expressly of the new heavens and new earth, in Isa. 65:9. And to the same purpose our blessed Lord, citing one of the manifold repetitions of the 37th Psalm, says: “‘ Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”? (Matt. 5:5); which Prov. 2: 21, 22 repeats in this form: “‘ For the upright shall dwell in the land [or earth, which is the same thing in Hebrew and in Greek], and the perfect shall remain in it; but the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it.”

With this compare Isa. 26:17-21; spoken to God’s few and dispirited people of the olden time: O Zion! “ thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust! for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, AND THE EARTH SHALL CAST

1B THE BURIED NATIONS

OUT THE DEAD. Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut the doors about thee; hide thyself, as at were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast. For, BEHOLD THE LorpD (JEHOVAH) COMETH OUT OF HIS PLACE TO PUNISH THE INHABITANTS OF THE WORLD FOR THEIR INIQUITY; the earth also shall disclose her blood (Heb. bloods —blood violently and wickedly shed), and shall no more cover her slain.’’ ‘WHEN HE MAKETH INQUISITION FOR BLOOD (bloods, again) HE REMEMBERETH THEM ; HE FORGETTETH NOT THE CRY OF THE HUMBLE.’’ What a day of reckoning that will be for France, and Spain, and for the Babylonian Woman, ‘‘ drunken with the blood of saints,’ who set them on! ‘‘It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of _gudgment, than for thee.” Mat. 11:24. Compare 2 Kings 24:4.

It is natural and unavoidable for us, in addressing such as have come to years of discretion, to insist on it ‘‘that they repent, and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance”’ (Acts 26:20); that ‘‘they believe and obey the Gospel’’; that they ‘‘take the yoke of Christ”? and wear it, “and learn of him,’’ as indispensable to their becoming “‘ heirs of the kingdom which God has prepared for them that love him” (James 2:5); but on one never-to-be-forgotten occasion, when mothers were bringing their babes that Jesus might bless them, and the disciples rebuked the mothers for interrupting the Master’s discourse about matters more important, as they supposed, we are told, for once, that “‘ Jesus was much displeased, and said: Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; FOR OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF GOD.” Mark 10:18, 14. These words are sometimes used as authority for presenting infants to God in holy baptism; but one moment’s reflexion will convince us that the words have nothing to do with the ordinance of baptism; first, because Christian baptism was not then instituted ; and secondly, because in fact we do not suffer the little children to come unto him in holy baptism, except the children of professedly believing parents—persons competent to assume and fulfil the vows of baptism.

The captain of an English steamer with whom I returned home, after my second term of missionary service in Colombia, South America, told me he had heard the bishop of Trinidad, the large island at the mouth of the river Orinoco, peopled mostly by ignorant and half-christianized negroes and Indians, under the British flag, say that the large majority of babies baptized in his diocese were bastards. I am not responsible for the statement, but it is quite in line with the state of morals down there, both on the islands and on the mainland, where most of the people in Venezuela and Colombia are born out of wedlock; and I suppose that we Presbyterians would under such circumstances prefer to turn Baptists, rather than prostitute thus one of the most precious ordinances of God’s house; just as we might be induced to turn Quakers, if law and usage, under a State Church, required every bailiff and sheriff to ‘‘take the sacrament,’’ as an indispensable condition to holding office; as I am informed was the case in England one or two centuries ago. ; It is more customary to understand the words as teaching that a childlike character and disposition are necessary to enter heaven; using them as a strict parallel to Christ’s words on another occasion: “‘ Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Matt. 18:3. But is that all, or the half of what our Master intended to teach by these precious words? ‘“‘ Of such-like is the kingdom of heaven”? would be an insufferable dilution of them. Still further, they may be properly and strikingly applied to the case of those of us from whom God in his holy, wise and no doubt beneficent providence, takes away. our babes; and in spite of our earnest hopes and prayers (and sometimes in spite of the impotent and violent protests of the ungodly), bears away on angels’ wings their souls to his own immediate presence, and lays away securely their infant bodies in the silent tomb—planted (or sown, as Paul expresses it) in “God’s acre,’’ against the great harvest day.

Galvin and Dying Infants.

Dr. Philip Henry in his Life and Times of Calvin, affirms that Calvin was the first of the Reformers of the 16th century to hold and teach that dying infants are saved without baptism; and yet by the art and subtlety of Satan, and the perversity of human nature, there are some Protestants even who do not cease to represent that Calvinists, and especially Presbyterians, hold to the damnation of infants. Now if truth and honesty were their end and purpose, instead of ‘bearing false witness against their neighbors,” who protest against the horrible imputation, as a baseless calumny, why are they not brave enough to lay the charge where it properly belongs, and where there would be no uncharity in making it, nor any difficulty in proving it? Why spare the Papal Church, which openly and fearlessly holds and teaches that without water baptism there is no salvation, and that ALL UNBAP- TIZED INFANTS, dying so, ARE LosT! Their doctors are not agreed among themselves as to what becomes of them, some holding that they are in fact “‘damned’’; some others, that they never attain to the condition of rational beings; others that they are consigned to a painless and eternal state of “‘ Limbo”; but they are all agreed that all such are not, and never can be saved, and are eternally excluded from heaven ;—for the lack of somebody (man, woman, or midwife) to apply the water, and repeat over them, with the right intention, the formula of Christian baptism. Thus they include among the lost, and make no difficulty about confessing it, the numberless multitudes of the infant dead of all the heathen nations, of Mohammedans, Jews, Baptists, Quakers, and the churchless masses of Christian lands, who disregard the Christian Church and all its institutions. Pray, why all this tenderness about the feelings of Roman Catholics and ritualists, while bravely heaping the malicious charge on Calvinists and Presbyterians ?

** Elect Infants, Dying in Infancy.”’

The Presbyterian Confession of Faith, in treating of Effectual Calling, or the personal application of the redemptive work of Christ, has of

OF THE INFANT DEAD. VW necessity to, treat of the case of infants who die before they become responsible beings. Of these and others like them, Chap. X, Sec. 3, says; ‘* Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, where and how he pleaseth. So also are other elect persons [idiots, imbeciles, etc.] incapable of being called outwardly by the word.” This phrase, ‘‘ elect infants, dying in infancy,” has been singled out by some persons who have forgotten the fundamental law, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” to fix upon Presbyterians the stigma of “the damnation of infants’’; as teaching that non-elect infants, dying in infancy are lost—a sample of the bad logic of some men who are as gentle as lambs, and as mum as mice, as respects the logical consequences, and the openly professed consequences, of the heresy of Baptismal Regeneration. We freely confess that the phraseology, which 300 years ago had probably a reference now lost, is unfortunate and needlessly perplexing, if not misleading. ‘“‘Elect PERSONS, dying in infancy,’’ would fully express the idea of the Confession of Faith, and would be free from all possible misunderstanding.